I really like the idea of Lambda the Ultimate, a blog/community/forum of people interested in and in many cases actively pushing the boundaries of programming languages. But there's this caustic edge to the people there that is pretty shocking.

In a recent thread, the conversation was started with a comment which assumed that everyone was on board with Function Programming (hence FP) being desirable or obviously superior to other methods. Brian T. Rice lamented the FP or sophisticated type system hegemony that was assumed in the question; he answered that he hoped the bigotry would stop and that research (and actual work) into other types of languages would not be dismissed out of hand. His description of the types of languages he's been working on, which included the concepts of an "object" but also many other more FP style comments, yielded this astonishingly self-unaware reply:

It's probably hard to paper over the fact that you don't have enough type machinery, but I don't see why you have to use the word "object". What's wrong with "entity-directed programming" or "stuff-related programming"?

I cannot rightly comprehend the state of mind that produces such a statement. It's absolutely implicitly presumed that "not having enough type machinery" (a quantity, not even a quality) is automatically undesirable. It's an absolutely astonishing leap to a relative foreigner who has studied programming languages and enjoys them but is far more a tradesman than someone advancing the tools of the craft.

Another user replies to the original

What needs to be done is telling people who are not using FPLs is that they produce worthless shit, that they can't proof their case and only adhering to a particular programming paradigm, rooted in sound foundations, can bring them halfway there. Show people heaven but even more scare them, show them hell and make them miserable about their current life so they are willing to jump on the bandwagon.

I can't speak for the author of this quote, but it seems that there's a general consensus that "a particular paradigm" does not mean "multi-paradigm languages are dangerous", but that the particular paradigm you should use if you don't want to produce "worthless shit" is FP. I don't really see the purpose in this type of rhetoric, other than to give communities of otherwise earnest and intelligent people who are trying to advance the boundaries of the science a completely unsavory flavor. Or in terms that might match more closely those quoted, if using FP is going to make me a belligerent dick, then thanks but no thanks.

Sep 10 2011